Mountains and Islands

It's not really my birthday anymore. That was yesterday. I had fully intended to log on last night to tell you all about it, but a) it wasn't all that eventful and b) I ate so much for dinner last night that once we arrived back home, it wasn't long before I was zonked. Dinner was lovely. We at at Kilauea Lodge. I think it's one of the best restaurants on the island. It broke da bank and broke the mout'! The soup was a delicious puree of peas, cabbage, cream and curry. It had a name, but I can't pronounce it. For our main course we had Duck l'orange and Seafood Mauna Kea. The seafood dish was scallops, shrimp, fish and calamari with an assortment of veggies, topped with a sauce of creme fraiche, on pasta. The appetizer was to die for; coconut crusted, fried brie served with fruit salsa and fresh bread. And the dessert? Onolicious. A custard with raspberry sauce topping. It was all good. The lodge is so cozy, with a big fireplace, vaulted ceiling and koa wood...

"Each time Honolulu city lights stir up memories in me. Each night Honolulu city lights bring me back again...." (Keola Beamer) Ron and I did something crazy on Sunday. We went to Honolulu for the DAY. "No we're not the jet set..... We're the old Chevrolet set....." (Tammy Wynette) Ah yes, life is just one song lyric after another. Anywho, we flew to Honolulu to have lunch with one of Ron's clients who was on vacation on that far away isle. It's just a one hour flight from Hilo. (I wonder if there's a Hawaiian word for boondoggle?) We spent most of our time on the bus, traveling between the airport and Waikiki. That's because we aren't even the Chev-ro-let set. We ride da bus, brah! Hey, isn't using mass transit one of the best ways to help curb our use of greenhouse gases and stem the tide of global warming? Besides, it only cost $2 each way rather that $40 by cab. So there you go. I used the money I saved to buy a new aloha shirt ...

Aloha from the biggest cyber-slacker in Hawaii. I know I've been remiss these past few days about posting. The weather's just been so nice that I just had to ride the tractor! We were finally able to get it back to the upper reaches of our property and it looks largely clearable, except for the forested part. That can be cleared too, but will take something a little bigger than my little John Deere to do it. Ah but first things first. Most of the open area is covered by tall ferns, not grass. The ferns are easy compared the the grass. So I've been mowing them into fern dust. Poof! It just started raining ten minutes ago. In fact, it's pouring. On Sunday, we made our quarterly pilgrimage to the west side to get some sun. We ate at a place called Quinn's Almost By the Sea, which served the best fish and chips on the island. It was ono. It was also ono; that is to say, the fish they fry is called ono, one of my favorites. You gotta appreciate a fish that's so good ...

I can't believe I actually forgot to mention our most recent homeowners' adventure. Last weekend, our hot water heater died. It sprung a leak, big time. So off to Sears we drove. Before leaving, however, Ron had the chance to talk story with our neighbor and tell him about our latest mishap. "You'll have to install the new one yourself," said Leonard. "Oh no," replied Ron. "I think this time I'll just pay a few extra bucks to have the guys at Sears install it." "You'll end up installing it yourself," insisted Leonard. Leonard was right. Sears is short-handed with very few employees available to perform appliance installations. Apparently, this is always the case. Sears has been short handed for the past 20 years here. So they said they had nobody available to do the installation any time soon. If we wanted to wait, we could, but it could be several weeks and the cost would be $250. Since the unit itself only cost $350, it seem...

Shine on me sunshine, walk with me world it's a skipidee do da day.... She's the happiest girl, in the whole USA.... Ah but the question remains; is she actually in the USA? Oh sure, Hawaii is technically a state. But there are those here who contest that, since the overthrow of the Hawaiian Monarchy was illegal. They've got a point. Bill Clinton officially apologized. It occurred to me after my last post that Lucy has, by far, gotten the most face time on the blog of late. So today it's Hoppsy's turn. Isn't she adorable? Speaking of sunshine, we've actually seen some throughout the last two days. I'm glad for the reprieve from the rain, however brief. Yesterday, Ron and I went to beautiful downtown Pahoa to check out their newly developing restaurant row. Funny thing is, most of them are closed on Sunday except for our old standby, the Mexican food joint. So, Luquin's it was. We had fish nachos. Never had those before. Very tasty. We also dropp...

No self-respecting cat can resist a box. Lucy is no exception. If she's not in a box, she's sneaking into cupboards or closets. She is quite the little explorer. Today at work a man came in to ask for the key to the lua . Clearly he was a local. One test of a person's knowledge of the islands is whether or not he or she knows the difference between a lua and a luau. A luau is a feast. The lua is where you go sometime after the feast. We are experience substantial rain lately. Or, as they say locally, "We get plenny da kine ua ." Not much is new. It's been raining so much and so hard we haven't even considered any yard work in weeks. The coffee trees are still doing well and the vegetable garden is protected by our Puna Style greenhouses. It's somewhat treacherous just getting to town and back. Yesterday, I actually slowed down to about 20 mpg along one stretch when the rain was coming down so hard I couldn't see much of anything in front of th...

Raindrops keep fallin ' on my head..... but that doesn't mean my eyes will soon be turnin ' red. Cryin's not for me... cuz .... I'm never gonna stop the rain by complainin '...... Ah but if I could, just by complainin ', I would. On Sunday, with the water coming down, I had to get out and about. So I went to the Maku'u Farmers' Market. The place was packed. There was actually a traffic jam of people trying to get in and out of the parking lot from the highway. When I asked the juice lady what was up, she just replied, "This is what happens when it's been raining for two weeks straight and then there's a break in the weather. Everyone just has to get out." Indeed. I picked up papayas and bananas at the market, then found my way to a new pet supply place in Hawaiian Paradise Park. How's that for a corny community name? They call it HPP for short. There is also an area called Hawaiian Beaches, Hawaiian Acres.... pretty imaginativ...

The weather's been less than optimal lately, unless you happen to be a duck or a toad or a fungus. Last Thursday night, I attended my first Hawaii Island Tea Society meeting. The Tea Society is a non-profit organization recently formed to promote the cultivation and processing of tea as a crop on the Big Island. Tea grows well here and artisan tea masters are now beginning to understand how best to process theirs for high quality green, oolong or black teas. At this meeting, a grower in the Volcano area demonstrated his method for processing and drying oolong . We all tasted his finished product and, I must say, this was not my grandma's Lipton. This tea, completely unadorned, was flowery fragrant, smooth and mellow. It tasted naturally sweet. The difference between green, oolong and black teas are not the plants but the length of time the tea is oxidized and fermented before drying. For oolong , only the top three leaves of a new shoot are picked. For green, only the top two...

According to Wikipedia, "Jury-rigging" or "jerry-rigging" refers to makeshift repairs or substitutes, made with only the tools and materials that happen to be on hand. Where I live, we simply call it Puna style. As you can see here, Lucy's all about Puna style. To give you an example, our storage shed is Puna style. Our greenhouses are Puna style. Ron has learned that he's been doing things Puna style for much longer than he's known what that is. Back in Colorado and before that in California I called him the jury-rigging king. In Gunnison, he made a funky plywood doggie door in our cabin to keep out the cold and let the pups go in and out through out garage. It came complete with a clasp made of a wooden peg. In California, while we were still dating and I was still in school, he connected a fan to the battery under the seat of my VW Beetle so I could kinda-sorta have air conditioning. It worked great until the wire shorted and began to burn, filling th...

There's a new sushi bar in town! Yay ! We'll go tomorrow night, so I'll report my review next blog. I've been thinking that Hilo could easily support another sushi joint, especially considering that the the largest segment of the population is Japanese. Today was a short one for me at ye ol ' wine factory. Most days are borderline crazy with visitors. Today, however, business was painfully, boringly slow, so one of us was asked to volunteer to go home. Both of my co-workers said they would prefer to stay, so I gratefully (and I think gracefully) skadoodled . Or is that skeedaddled ? I'm sitting here watching the news and see that some researchers have attached transmitters to a bunch of adolescent honu (turtles). The green sea turtle, which is endangered and protected in Hawaiian waters, is the subject of their study. The transmitters can send a signal from under the ocean surface to a satellite orbiting the earth. They'll track patterns of movement to l...

The sun will come out, tomorrow. Bet yer bottom dollar that tomorrow, there's be SUN..... TOMORROW, TOMORROW, I love ya, tomorrow, it's only a day away. Did I mention that the climate here is somewhat humid? This is what it does to my hair. Also, the wall behind me is the color I've painted the guest room. Pretty bold, huh? Today was very foggy. At least the wind has died down. It blew so hard yesterday and the day before that we lost our carport tarp. The wind just ripped it to shreds. Our Puna style greenhouses needed a little repair too but overall, they survived. We've got pepper plants with blossoms, peas and soy beans sprouting out and cabbage seedlings searching for daylight. There's a hole in the neighbor's fence. We know this because his goat came to visit the other day into our yard. That would be OK except for the fact that he (the goat, not the neighbor) seems to fancy munching on our coffee trees. The neighbor is a nice guy though and as soon as we...

Yay ! Radio found his person. As it turned out, the number on his collar was not a license number at all. Instead, it was a phone number. Are we boneheads or what. I called left a message, then headed to the shelter. While I was checking Radio in and being promised that they would do everything they could to find his owner or find him a home, his owner came to get him. He seemed like a pretty nice guy and said he'd been looking for him for days. Radio looked like he'd been out longer than that, but he was a big beat up. The guy does use him for hunting, but said he did not tangle with a pig. It was a pack of wild dogs! They roam the forest in the area. They also injured another of his dogs. Sheesh ! What a place. Anywho , he seemed OK and Radio (I think the guy said his real name was Tapi ) seemed glad to see him and comfortable getting right into his truck. Good luck, Radio. The truth is, I could never work at the Humane Society. I simply do not have the emotional fortitude ...

Meet Radio. He's an emaciated hunting dog we found wandering out of the woods yesterday on our walk with the poochies . We call him radio because he had a humongous collar on that had some sort of radio tracking device on it. The poor little guy looks like he's been on his own for awhile. He's pretty starved with quite a few cuts and abrasions and what seem to be very stiff and sore legs. It's not uncommon here for hunting dogs to get lost and disoriented, only to wander out of the forest weeks later. He's very sweet and trusting, so we've decided he probably wasn't abused. He's just been lost for a long time. So we'll contact the humane society tomorrow and take him in to see if he has a microchip. We've also been told that owners can be tracked by the number on the radio collar. He looks like he could have ringworm and who knows what else, so we've been advised not to allow him in to have too much contact with our brood. So we made up a com...

This morning I made my way to town to see the allergy doctor. I actually have never seen the doctor himself. Instead, I see a nurse practitioner who works for him. She's actually great. She checked me out and apparently, all is well. After that, I took my empty stomach to a place called Koji's Bento Korner . It's a downtown Hilo classic, serving traditional plate-lunch fare. Every day offers a different special. Today's was the beef short rib/chow funn for $4.95. It's a combo of beef short ribs, chow funn (Chinese flat noodles with veggies and sauce) all on top of a humongous mound of steamed rice and a side of mac salad. I never eat the mac salad here. With noodles and rice, another starch seems unnecessary. Not to mention the fact that, while I do enjoy mac or potato salad on rare occasion, I prefer a little more mac and a lot less mayo than is the norm for recipes here. Local style is to smother the poor, hopelessly overcooked macaroni in mayonnaise here, ...

Today, I had a great excuse to drive to Na'alehu. With my reporter hat on, pen and pad in hand, I went to interview the founders of the Naohulelua Garden. It's a collection of endangered endemic and indigenous plants, along with what are called canoe plants. The garden is less than two years old, but already displays a respectable sampling of now rare flora and fauna on this tiny plot of land. For those of you non-biology majors like me, indigenous plants are those native to a specific location. They may also be found elsewhere in the world. Endemic plants are those exclusive to one location. They are found nowhere else in the world. Here in Hawai'i, we not only have endemic plants found only in the islands, but some that are endemic to a particular island and some endemic to a particular patch of ground on a particular island. Anyway, these folks are doing their part to preserve endangered plant species. Canoe plants are those brought here by the first wave of Polynesian...

Here's a little ti plant landscaping project I did several weeks ago. So far, I'm ecstatic that none of the plants I stuck in the ground have died. I whacked these out of an overgrown jungle area on the property. That's what's both cool and frustrating about this place. You can just cut stuff, stick it in the ground and it will grow. That makes it difficult to really get rid of overgrowth if you really want to. If you leave it lying there after you cut it or pull it out, it will grow back. Another frustrating thing is that since I planted these three weeks ago, it's been raining nearly non-stop. I saw a hilarious bumper sticker today: "Fat people are hard to kidnap." Indeed. Today I had my first interview for a story I've been assigned by the Journal. Tomorrow is interview number two. This should be fun. One of the things I love most about being a journalist is meeting lots of interesting people who do interesting things. Today, I spoke with the woma...

Yay ! I got a job! OK so I wouldn't go so far as to say that I've resumed a new, lucrative career path and can now reap my fortune here in the Sandwich Isles. Still, it's a job none-the-less. In fact, I've got two jobs. One is a fun little gig at the Volcano Winery. I pour wine tastings and help people buy stuff in the retail store. It's easy and fun and pays what you would expect from something easy and fun. The co-workers are all very nice with an interesting array of backgrounds. The wine is unique. Some of the offerings are actually good. The Symphony Dry is excellent! I've also signed on as a freelancer for the Hawaii Island Journal , a local independent rag ala West Word or Willamette Week (without the Pulitzer - so far anyway). This one really does have great potential. I've been assigned a couple of stories already. I'm pretty excited to dive into that. Of course, the day I met with the editor was the same day I got the call from the winery and...

Am I the only one who thinks the college football bowl game scenario has become a bit of a laughing stock? Sure, we still have the classics - the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Gator Bowl - but over the years there have sprouted a number of corporate-sponsored games with silly, commercial names like the Tostitos Bowl, Fritos Bowl, Doritos Bowl, the Campbell's Soup Bowl.... OK most of those aren't really bowl games. But Tostitos Bowl is real and the others might as well be. After all, there really is a Chick-Fil-A Bowl, Alamo Bowl (and not, it's not named after that historic place in San Antonio where Davy Crockett and his brave band of Americans battled Santa Ana's army), the GMAC Bowl, the Meineke Car Care Bowl, the MCP Computers Bowl, the Papa John's Pizza Bowl, the Outback Steakhouse Bowl.... To steal from John Stossel, "Give me a break!" Yes, I ask you, what parent wouldn't be proud to see a son play in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl? This bowl game silliness goes r...

I can see clearly now, the rain has gone..... not! Psych! We've had it in every form over the past few days. At times, drizzle. Other times, it's a downpour. In between, it's just plain old, garden variety (or should I say garden drowning) rain. Of course, there's no such thing as garden variety rain in Hawaii. At least not as far as the Hawaiian language is concerned. The word for rain is ua, but that's just the simple translation. There are really many, many words and phrases used to describe rain here. They include not just the rain itself - like driving rain, chilly rain, slanting rain - but what time of day it's raining, where it's raining, in what district, in the mountains, the valley or the shore, in the city or the country. We've had some bad luck with some of our newly-made island acquaintances. To be truthful, they are the ones with the bad luck. One of our first contacts here, our real estate agent, told me to be sure to call her when we fin...

Happy New Year! I must say, I kinda like walking the dogs in the morning wearing shorts and a t-shirt during the holidays! I especially appreciate it after seeing the snow storms that have been hammering Denver in recent weeks. I shot these pictures the other day on my visit to Volcanoes National Park. The flag, with Mauna Loa in the background, flies on the beautifully manicured grounds of Kilauea Military Camp. It flies at half staff in honor of Gerald Ford. The little fenced square with smoke coming out of it is a steam vent. I can only assume the fencing is a form of INS for the Park Service. INS, as I understand it, stands for Interfering with Natural Selection. In this case, it's to protect humans too stupid not to know that jumping into a steam vent near active volcanoes is a bad idea. Today, I discovered that our coffee trees have a condition called Cercospora. It's a fungus, common in areas with lots of rain. Looks like we'll have to spring for some copper fungicid...